


to the photographic pads of fingertips

by summerstorm



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-25
Updated: 2011-05-25
Packaged: 2017-10-19 18:56:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstorm/pseuds/summerstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's not even, like, vulnerable over this shit. She just wants to get the hell out of here and go back home and never be forced to think about her short-lived relationship with Mark Zuckerberg again. She has better things to do with her time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to the photographic pads of fingertips

**Author's Note:**

> According to my half-assed calculations, I wrote about 93% of this in February. magisterequitum read it then and looked over it for me again once it was done, so I feel like I should thank her twice. Let's just say I am very, very grateful.

Having to sit through a deposition and talk about something Erica hasn't even thought about for a really long time is a trip. All these questions about her break-up with Mark Zuckerberg and how Face Mash came about and how it affected her, and the timeline of those moments he felt the need to talk to her after that—she can't even figure out how most of those things are relevant to the lawsuits Mark's facing, and doesn't want to think her sole purpose here is to make Mark look bad, even though she suspects that's the closest theory to the truth.

She's not even, like, vulnerable over this shit. She just wants to get the hell out of here and go back home and never be forced to think about her short-lived relationship with Mark Zuckerberg again. It was bad enough when she thought about him without prompting. This is a bunch of people poking her nonexistent wounds, trying to get something out of them that she doesn't have in her. It's not even painful; it's just boring, and contrary to whatever everyone's respective lawyers believe, she has better things to do with her time than help people she's barely even met get billions of dollars from Facebook.

The hotel she's put up in—she considers not allowing that, but she's up to her neck in student loans; besides, this is practically a business trip, and it's fair that her expenses be covered by those who want her here—is nice, kind of flashy. Her room isn't as embarrassing as most of the hotel, which doesn't really matter seeing as she's not planning on inviting anyone over, but it is a nice gesture, assuming it's a gesture and not just a coincidence.

Her second night there—the first night she arrives and doesn't immediately collapse on her bed—she wanders down to the bar for a drink. She figures there's a chance she'll see someone she'll recognize from her meetings with lawyers, so she's only mildly surprised when she spots one of the Winklevoss twins sitting at the bar. She didn't know they were staying here, even though they fit the decor a lot better than she does: straight back, designer suit, very nice shoes. See, now they probably are staying in one of the showy suites. She wonders what the point of hanging down here is for them, though; they can afford room service, and surely there's better company to be found in an actual club.

Pretending she doesn't recognize him sounds like a much more awkward way to go about things than facing them straight on, so she stalks up to the bar and takes the stool next to him. She orders a drink and doesn't acknowledge him until he acknowledges her, which takes a surprisingly short time.

"Hey," he says, "you're, uh..."

"I am," she echoes, unimpressed, "I am fairly sure I _am_ ," beginning to think talking to him might not have been such a bright idea.

"We haven't been officially introduced." He holds out his hand. "I'm Tyler Winklevoss."

She raises an eyebrow but accepts the gesture, shaking his hand as firmly as she's capable of pretending she cares. "Erica Albright," she says superfluously, and resists the urge to make a joke about her role in this whole thing and Mark's life, since Tyler probably already knows and didn't bother adding some pompous clarification to his name himself.

The only thing they know they have in common is Mark Zuckerberg, and she regrets setting herself up for a conversation about him—as if she didn't get enough of that this morning, and that was only prep—until Tyler asks her how she's liking the hotel. It's not the liveliest of topics, but at least it's not uncomfortable.

It's only when the conversation lags that she asks, "So how pissed at Mark are you guys, exactly?"

"On a scale of one to ten?" he says. Erica shrugs dismissively. She doesn't have any particular interest in receiving an accurate answer. "On a scale of one to ten, I'd say we're pretty pissed."

"Both of you?" she asks. "Same amount of anger?"

"Roughly," Tyler says. "I'd be inclined to think Cameron's slightly more incensed."

"You would," Erica says curiously.

"Yeah. He's less the type to sue people over a fistful of rage."

Erica tilts her head and hums under her breath for a second. "He seems pretty composed about all this."

"Exactly," says Tyler. It probably makes more sense in his head than it does to her; she can understand that Cameron Winklevoss might be good at not showing his emotions, or whatever Tyler's implying, but not that his composure is likely to spike as his feelings do. Erica doubts that's true of anyone.

She wonders what refill Tyler's on by now. She can give him the benefit of the doubt—she can believe this isn't him at his sharpest. She's not feeling particularly sharp herself.

Tyler taps the side of his glass and asks, "How about you?"

"How angry am I?" Erica says. She leans forward with her forearms on the bar, eying Tyler sharply. "I wasn't until I was pulled out here to talk about my personal life on record to help settle your little dispute."

Tyler snorts a laugh. "I wouldn't call it a _little_ dispute."

Erica's had enough to drink by now that when she laughs in surprise, meaning to be just a breath, it comes out high-pitched and ugly. "Is that innuendo? I can't tell."

Tyler shrugs with his lips; he seems taken aback by the question. "Well," he says.

"Well?"

"It could be," Tyler says, and Erica makes a shocked face. He raises an eyebrow, and there's a short stretch of silence before he says, like a cautious attempt at something, "It could even imply a proposition. If you want it to."

That's the first time she really looks at him. He's kind of enormous, so tall and wide next to her. If Erica were that kind of person, and she kind of is, her first thought would be _Yes, I do want it to_ ; because she only _kind of_ is, the thought doesn't make it out of her mouth. There's something really appealing about him, something that draws her in—a certain overload of confidence despite the situation she's found him in, a solidity under her gaze that she's not entirely used to. When he meets her eyes, she thinks about Mark, who she hasn't seen in the flesh yet, not in a long time, and how his brand of arrogance always felt sort of flimsy and irrelevant to the context it shone in. Tyler carries it like an armor that's become a second skin.

It's funny to think someone like Tyler Winklevoss is who Mark chose to get in a fight with. Of course he did.

She chuckles into her empty glass and tries to think of something to change the subject—it seems like the thing to do—but the lateness of the hour is beginning to catch up with her, and she stares silently at the melting ice cubes in her glass. Lightly swirling them, she wonders if she should get another drink or call it a night now, before she does something stupid like sleep with Tyler before she can confirm there's more to his interest than the general prospect of sex and the extremely warped idea that fucking her might on some level qualify as exacting revenge on Mark.

"You look jet-lagged," he breaks the silence, nodding lightly.

"I look _jet-lagged_ ," she echoes in mock outrage. "Since when?"

"About two drinks ago?" Tyler offers.

They talk a while longer; by the time she gets her ass off her stool, there isn't a single fiber of her that's thinking about anything besides sleep. He stands to walk her to her room, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder, warm through her shirt. They're halfway to the elevator when who she can only assume is Tyler's brother Cameron walks up to them, his hair and shirt a little ruffled. He's still wearing a suit, which makes him seem somewhat imposing when he looks Tyler straight on and says, "I need to talk to you."

Erica takes a step back, and Cameron turns to her. His entire demeanor seems to soften when he meets her eyes, before her perception of him as intimidating is done settling.

"Erica, right?" he says. At her nod, he adds, "I'm Cameron." His handshake is firm, firmer than Tyler's, but maybe it just seems that way to her because she's more tired now than she was when Tyler introduced himself. His tone is softer, and there's something about the lack of last names that sticks in her mind.

She looks at both of them. It's not hard to tell there's some pressing issue that requires her absence before it can be talked about, so she waves vaguely at Tyler and turns on her heels.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Tyler says, a little belatedly.

"May or may not," Erica finishes. She's already walking off.

//

She's staying a few days, for now. Most of her time is free; she doesn't have that much to go over, and she suspects they're only keeping her around this long in case new questions arise after she's deposed. She's supposed to be available at short notice and she figures she can get more done in her hotel room here than going back and forth on a plane. She's always had trouble concentrating on moving vehicles.

The first person who invites her to something other than a business meeting is one of Mark's lawyers, a young, dark-haired woman whose job in this case is apparently sit in and take notes and occasionally tell people to let other people finish. Erica can't fault her for the former, she happens to appreciate the latter, and she figures it can't be that unprofessional if it's coming from the person who's supposed to keep up appearances in the first place. Besides, it's only lunch at a large coffeehouse across the street. There's nothing secretive about it. Erica figures if this woman—if Marylin Delpy wanted to manipulate her into something, she'd try to be a little more secretive. Then again, what does Erica know about California lawyers anyway.

Once they're settled and have food, Marylin says, "So how are you doing with all this?"

Erica closes off immediately. "Don't tell me you're taking on the therapist role. I don't need someone to talk to."

"I don't make a habit of working during my lunch break," Marylin says, just as unaffected.

"I'm not helping your case," Erica points out. "I can't help your case."

"Would you believe me if I said you looked uneasy and I wanted to give you a chance to relax?"

"No," Erica says, raising her eyebrows. She breathes in sharply through her teeth. "But I guess I can pretend."

Marylin smiles a little then, with something like amusement, and her demeanor seems to brighten. "Good. That's all I was hoping for."

Erica's main concern now isn't that Marylin might implicitly try to sway her testimony to be less harsh on Mark; she could handle that, whatever. The problem is, all that connects them _is_ Mark and the lawsuits, and Erica's always had trouble thinking of conversation points when there's an elephant in the room that hasn't been dealt with and maybe should be.

It's not long before she stops worrying; Marylin has a life, full of office politics that should be boring without being given names but Erica finds fascinating, and an interest in several things Erica's happy to hear about. They talk about job hunting and student loans, random TV, the last movie they went to see, the engagement ring Marylin carries in her jacket pocket, and at one point Erica finds herself bullet-point listing her views on education. It's fun, and it has nothing to do with Erica's deposition or even Mark in general, and Erica leaves the place with a smile on her face.

//

Tyler knocks on her door late in the afternoon, when the sun's still out. She assumes it's Tyler because he's the one who practically threatened he'd seek her out, but she doesn't have time to wonder before he cracks a smile and says, "It's Tyler."

"I can see that," she says, stepping aside and closing the door behind him. The bitterness in her tone isn't entirely fake, but she does appreciate the confirmation.

He snorts a laugh. "Sure you can. Are you doing anything right now?"

"Right now as in, do I have plans for tonight, or—right now?" she asks, eyebrows furrowed. She takes a look around; her laptop's propped open on her desk, screen black by now. She's done with the chapter she was reading, and the idea of continuing with that book holds about as much appeal to her as going hunting.

"Whatever right now makes sense to you in the context of catching a movie that begins in forty minutes," says Tyler.

He's not dressed up, so her jeans and shirt are fine; she just needs to fix her hair, maybe slap on some make-up, and find a pair of boots that won't require getting out of her socks. Technically, she could probably—yeah, she could go out. She could use a break.

"How long is the drive?"

He shrugs. "Fifteen, twenty minutes?"

"Okay," Erica says, "then you should leave now, and I'll meet you downstairs in a little while."

"What kind of little while are we looking at?"

"One little enough to get to the movie on time," Erica says, cocking her head. He raises his hands in surrender and leaves it at that.

//

They grab a cab, though she knows for a fact Tyler's renting a car here. It can't be more than five minutes before Tyler tells her that he made reservations at a little restaurant near the movie theatre, nothing too fancy, she shouldn't feel threatened, they'll be fine wearing what they are.

"I wasn't going to ask about the dress code," Erica says.

"You weren't," Tyler says, and this time he sounds curious instead of incredulous. She mentally gives him props for that.

She shrugs. "No. I figure if you take me someplace that requires formal wear without telling me to wear formal wear beforehand, it's your fault."

"Good." He rubs his hand over his thigh, and there's a split second where Erica thinks he might move it to hers—his fingers rise a little and sort of stretch towards her—but then it just ends up on the car seat.

She eyes him curiously. "Is this a date?" she asks, a bit wary, holding back an entertained smile. It doesn't really make a difference if it is a date or not, but there's something vaguely amusing about how much this looks like a date without Tyler ever having called it that.

After a long, considering intake of breath, he says, "Do you want it to be a date?"

Erica shrugs noncommittally. "I'm not overly attached to either option. But unless you're trying to redefine the concept of a booty call—which, you should know you're going to fail at, because I'm not having sex with anyone in a bathroom stall—this looks quintessentially datey."

"Then I guess it must be a date," Tyler says, and that's that.

//

The movie's terrible, but they agree on that, which both surprises Erica and makes things less awkward. She's always found bad movies easier to talk about than good ones, and it proves true for this one. He's also right on the matter of the restaurant; it's nice enough that semiformal wear—a suit, a nicer dress—wouldn't look out of place, but Erica feels comfortable in her nice jeans and boots.

He gets touchier as the evening progresses; he doesn't try anything in the theater, beyond some hand-brushing over popcorn that she's fairly sure is accidental, but he steers her towards their table with a hand high on her back that presses more comfortably and solidly as they get there. When she sits down, he doesn't just take it away; he drags it up her shoulder and down her arm, following the path down to where her own hand's resting on the table.

Dinner itself is nice, and he doesn't do anything stupid like try to order for her, which she probably should stop noticing, but which she appreciates all the same. He recommends certain things on the menu, but he doesn't seem too torn down when she sidesteps all of them. She does try his dessert when he offers, because she doesn't need a lot of convincing to put a little extra chocolate in her mouth, and she's not surprised when he leans forward at the same time she does and presses a feather-light kiss to the corner of her mouth. She kisses him back, just that little stolen thing, because she's not going to start making out with him over a table in public.

She licks her lips when she sits down properly again; he smiles at her, not a smirk, just an actual, normal smile. She finds herself returning it.

//

She pursues the date topic again on the ride back to the hotel.

"You do realize we're not going to see each other after this?" she points out, because they're not. They run in severely different circles, not to mention she doesn't have time for this right now. "You could've just taken me to your room."

"You forget what you lack in faith I own in transportation. Besides, I wanted to see this movie. I don't like to buy just one ticket."

Erica snorts. "And here I was thinking you wanted to do things right."

"No, that's the kind of shit my brother says to justify his shortcomings," Tyler says. "I just admit my ego doesn't like to embark on traditionally social ventures alone."

She can respect that, but forgoes saying it out loud.

"Besides, I can still take you to my room," Tyler says, his eyes full of obviousness, and she laughs and hits him lightly on the elbow.

"You're not going to get me a drink first?"

"Who says I can't get you a drink in my room?"

"That would be me," she says, "because you're not taking me there."

It's not so much stubbornness—if it were that, she'd say goodbye on the spot, not prolong their evening—as this discomfort that Cameron might walk in on them if they go to Tyler's room. She knows he's sharing a suite with his brother, and she knows it has separate bedrooms, but it's still a little weird, so she takes him to her room instead. He seems happy to compromise.

//

She has sex with him that night, in her modest queen-sized bed. She wakes up early in the morning, when the sun's just beginning to rise, with an arm stirring around her waist, trying to crawl out from under hers without waking her. Gingerly, she lifts her elbow.

"Thanks," he says softly, and strokes her stomach for a moment before disentangling himself from her. "I'm not sneaking out."

"Sure you're not," Erica says, for the sake of argument and—well, honesty. He is sneaking out. She's fine with it, but he doesn't need to lie about it.

"But not in an asshole kind of way," he says, stumbling over his words a little.

She snorts a laugh, breathy because her throat hasn't woken up yet, and if she has her way will go back to sleep in a minute. "Sure," she says again.

The mattress dips and rises as he gets off the bed. "I just have..."

"Work, I know," she mumbles, turning around and taking a brief look at him before burying her head in the pillow.

"I was going to say places to be."

She waves a dismissive hand and says, "Just go. Let me sleep. I'll see you later," and he does.

//

She's sent a car a few hours later. She forgets this is when she's supposed to be properly deposed, cameras and everything, until she finds herself sitting at a pristine table, surrounded by mirror-clean glass walls, and sporting a beautiful red mark just under her collar. She buttons one more button on her shirt and attempts to concentrate.

It's mostly painless; she expects most of the questions, and the ones she doesn't she can answer without too much guilt. She knows what Eduardo and the Winklevosses are asking of Mark isn't entirely undeserved, but all of them are rich already, and it isn't a life or death situation. She's not going to be intimidated into lying or exaggerating by any of these people for any of the reasons they have to care about this case.

It's not late when she gets out. She turns on her phone and finds a text from Tyler, saying they can go to lunch together when she's done; a more recent one—two minutes ago—tells her he's waiting downstairs. There's a missed call from her mom and a text from one of her friends asking how the deposition went, and she answers the latter with a simple _it was fine, catch up later_ , and leaves the former for later.

She's on her way across the floor when a familiar figure turns around and she finds herself face to face with Mark Zu—with Mark.

It's weird, how she's been thinking of him as a first and last name, this guy who's famous now and she has very little to do with, and now that she's looking at him she can't bring herself to pretend he's anything other than just _Mark_.

"Erica, hi," he says, words rushing out like a derailed train.

"Hey." Her eyes narrow; it's not his fault they ran into each other, exactly, at this particular time. She takes the few steps left to the elevator and presses the call button. It's a few floors away, so she turns to look at Mark again. He seems to be waiting for her to say something. "So," she says, and her voice softens more out of need than any sort of leftover fondness for him, "how are you?"

"Well—" Mark begins, slipping his hands into his pockets and shrugging a little. He doesn't say anything else. His eyes trail around for a fraction of a second, barely enough to decipher anything out of it, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out he's drawing her attention to where they are, and therefore to the fact that he's been sued, and so he could be better.

She doesn't think that's entirely fair, or that it answers her question, but she lets it go.

He pulls his hands out of his pockets and straightens up as much as Mark ever does. "Are you in a hurry? You look like you're rushing somewhere," he says, instead of asking how she is back like a normal person. She lets that go, too. "You're—shuffling your feet and—"

"I'm meeting someone," she says.

"You're meeting someone," he echoes, brows drawing together. "Here?"

She tilts her head. "Just outside." He probably means _here_ as in _in town_ and for it to imply an extra _how do you know anybody in town_ , but she doesn't want to engage in one of those arguments, and she figures her answer acknowledges both options.

"Do I know them?" he asks, and shuts his mouth in an almost comic move when she gives him a sharp look. "I mean, of course I don't—it's none of my business. Unless you're meeting up with anyone involved in these lawsuits, which would make it kind of my—"

"You're right, it is none of your business," she interrupts. There's a bit more bite there than she intends. "It's nothing," she says, her voice lighter. It sounds like an excuse, or like she's apologizing for being rude. She feels like in some other place, some other time, she'd explain that's not how she meant it—she'd tell Mark not to take it that way because he deserved her tone. But right now, that place feels like an interlude somewhere a lifetime away. It feels like a case of Erica being in the wrong place—the right one, for him, she guesses, since she was the catalyst for Face Mash, but she's sure if she hadn't been there, he would have found a way to do something just as idiotic and impressive—at the wrong—right—time.

"It's not nothing if you're—" Mark says, and then he frowns again, cutting himself off. She hears the elevator pull in, and _now_ Mark asks, "Are you okay? You look good."

"Thanks," she says. It's not exasperated, the way it would have back when they were dating. It's genuine. "Yeah, I'm fine." The elevator doors open. "Are you going somewhere?"

He takes a couple of seconds before answering, "No, I still have—I have stuff to do here."

"Okay," she says, turning around and walking into the elevator. "It was nice seeing you," she adds, and the doors start moving.

"You too," Mark says, and she can't tell if it sounds strangled because the doors close on him or because his voice comes out that way.

//

The first thought that runs through Erica's mind when she gets in Tyler's car—a slick, fancy sports car; a rental, probably, but he looks comfortable enough in it to assume he might own one like it—is a fleeting fear; she doesn't know Tyler that well, or well at all, and he strikes her as the kind of person who drives like a maniac and justifies it as a need for speed or something equally trite and ridiculous.

To her surprise, Tyler is a really good driver. He does go a little faster than most people are comfortable with, but it's not scary, and it's mostly not illegal; it actually makes the ride fun, pleasantly enthralling. Beyond occasionally ignoring the maximum speed signs, he's responsible; he keeps his eyes on the road and doesn't get distracted and he lets a couple of calls go to voicemail when his cellphone rings despite the fact that he could use the built-in hands free. She suspects that has something to do with her being in the car, but either way it's an observant thing to do. It's nice.

He takes her back to their hotel, and this time he does ask her to come up to his room.

"And what's in that for me?" Erica asks as they step into the hotel lobby.

Tyler goes over the options in his head and finally offers, "Expensive room service you don't have to feel guilty about ordering."

"Well, if that's what's in it for me," Erica says sweetly, but her voice shifts to a flat monotone as she finishes, "how can I refuse."

//

Erica knows the hotel has a very good team of chefs because eating at its restaurant is included within her covered expenses, but she didn't think she'd end up trying this many dishes. There's a dining room table in Tyler's suite, and by the time she gets there after leaving her stuff in her room and washing up, that dining room table looks like an all-you-can-eat buffet.

"They're small portions," Tyler says when she points this out, like that explains anything. It reminds Erica of this one time one of her cousins went on a vegetable-only diet for no good reason and ate so much within the ingredient guidelines he ended up gaining weight. Which he needed, in Erica's opinion, but that's not the point. Tyler tries again, "And I've been up since six in the morning."

That's a much better explanation, and Erica gives it to him with a quick nod. Then, she says, her tone laced with mock epiphanic highs, "I did know that."

She doesn't mind, anyway, because she hasn't been up for as long as Tyler has, but given coffee doesn't count as solid food, she hasn't eaten since last night. Besides, it's fun to try little bites of everything. At first she's afraid it might mess with her appetite, but it turns out she is hungry enough to mix and match without any repercussions on how much she's ready to eat.

Tyler seems happy to pick up the slack. He's a fast eater, but tidy, the motion of his hands over the table and the way he holds the cutlery elegant in this weird way that makes the slight crouch of his shoulders, the tilt of his head noticeable despite her own inability to keep her own back straight. She doesn't see anything wrong with it; she just sees it. He doesn't talk around food, but he talks in between bites, and somehow the conversation is lively regardless of its frequent jumps from actual topics to whatever Erica's stuck her fork into.

He wanders off to the balcony to return calls while she picks at her second piece of dessert, and she's so absorbed in the ridiculously incredible taste of the chocolate melting alongside raspberry liquor in her mouth that she doesn't notice he's come back until he leans against the corner of the table to her left.

"Hey," she says, looking up and swallowing, "this is amazing."

His hand comes to rest on her shoulder, fingers and palm slipping off as he thumbs at the spot her arm joins her chest. "Yeah?" There's a bit of pressure on her arm to pull her up, not enough to call manhandling, but enough that she gets the hint and hauls herself up to her feet, stepping sideways to stand between his stretched-out legs.

He waits for her to make a move, and she takes a few seconds just to look at him before rising on her toes and pressing a light kiss to his mouth. There's a hint of strawberry when she licks his bottom lip, complimentary to the lingering traces of chocolate she can still taste. He kisses back lightly, barely putting any of himself in it; she's about to step back when she feels his hands circle her hips and land on her ass, his shoulders crouching to reach lower so he can pull her up. She ends up setting one foot on her chair while he holds her thigh high against his hip.

There is literally nothing about the effortless way he can pick her up like this that she doesn't like, not even the awkward angle of her knee, not even the ridiculous smugness pouring out of his every pore. The fact that she can _feel_ the smugness without looking, in the rise of his chest, in the dig of his fingers in the back of her thigh, actually makes it even better.

She throws her arms over his shoulders, tangling her fingers far behind his head, and rocks into him as they kiss.

Eventually, he pulls away, cocking his head as he says, "I have to go now," his voice thin. He clears his throat. "I have to go."

"So I heard," Erica says, managing to hold back very little of a smirk.

"Yeah," he says. She moves to step off, but he holds her to him a moment longer, pressing their bodies together, their hips lining up.

"I don't think you have that kind of time," she points out, and he lets her down this time.

//

She means to go back to her room, maybe take a long, satisfying shower. She does go down, brushes her teeth, changes out of her boots into sneakers, and then she realizes she left her laptop bag upstairs, so she returns to his suite. He's still there, thankfully, just getting ready to go. He's in an undershirt when he opens the door; he's changing his shirt for reasons that frankly escape her, but she agrees to help him pick a new one. She sits on his bed with her laptop on her knees, tying up a few loose ends on this thing she's working on, glancing up every now and then to watch him storm through his suite until he has to go in a rush.

He kneels down—he actually, honest-to-god kneels down on the carpet—to kiss her before he leaves, not even like a goodbye kiss but like he wants to take that for the road, silly as it sounds to think of it that way, and she puts her laptop aside and lies back once he's gone, smiling much more intensely than the situation calls for. She doesn't even realize he's left her alone in his suite until she's extending her legs and getting comfortable in his bed.

She pushes the lid of her laptop down and shut with her calf. She draws her knee up and shifts on her side, cheek pressing against fabric. The comforter smells like fabric softener, lavender. She breathes in, feeling the air fill and leave her lungs, and closes her eyes.

//

For a second after she cracks her eyes open, she thinks she's still dreaming. The room is darker than before, the sun almost done setting, dark blue and red hues trickling in, and there's a weight on the mattress next to her, warm and solid. As she comes to, she becomes aware of the hand on her shoulder, the soft pressure of fingertips high on her back, the thumb tracing her collarbone, and now chapped lips on the other side of her neck, the mattress dipping her in.

She takes a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh. She glances at him for a second before her eyes flutter closed again, and whispers, "Hey."

"Hi," Tyler says from somewhere around her jaw, sounding relieved and a little impatient, and then his mouth slides up to hers.

She responds eagerly, more so than she normally would after waking up. She cradles the back of his neck in her hand, absently playing with his hair, and he moves to hover over her, a leg parting hers as he trails kisses down her neck. Shifting closer feels a little like melting into his body; she doesn't know if that makes it easier or harder for him to unbutton her shirt, but he manages well enough anyway.

"I hope you're really awake," Tyler mutters into her chest. She tries to say that maybe she isn't, but her throat isn't cooperating, so she makes a noncommittal noise instead, and breathes out a whimper when he hooks his thumbs into the waistband of her jeans and panties and pulls them together down her legs.

A door clicks open and slams shut, and she sees a thin, empty rectangle of light frame the bedroom door.

"Is that—"

Tyler chuckles over her stomach. "He's not going to come in," he says, cupping her between her legs, not touching, making her hips buckle.

After a second, even though he can't see her, she nods disbelievingly—he's sure Cameron's not going to bother them, but she's not sure she's entirely comfortable doing anything with Tyler while his brother's on the other side of the door. It's stupid, because she's had roommates before, and slept with guys who lived with their siblings while their siblings were in their house before, but this feels different somehow and she can't pinpoint why. The layout of the suite, maybe, the way she can hear Cameron pacing the room just beyond Tyler's bedroom wall.

Tyler rests his cheek on her thigh and looks up at her. There's enough light now to see his eyes, and she takes a deep breath. She catches the tail end of a sentence far away, Cameron talking to someone on the phone, just as Tyler eases a fingertip into her and spreads her out for his tongue. She moans.

//

By the time she finds the strength to pull her pants back on, Cameron's either left or somewhere not in the vicinity of the hallway door, and she can go back to her room without facing any awkwardness. She takes a quick shower, pulls her hair up into a ponytail and doesn't emerge from her desk until she gets a call on her hotel phone.

She pulls out her suitcase from the top shelf of her closet and rummages for treasure under her textbooks and some spare toiletries and clothes she hadn't bothered to unpack. She's just about given up hope on finding the dress she's almost certain she threw in when she remembers she had it pressed and folded into one of the front compartments of her luggage.

It's just a little cocktail dress, black, simple, and it makes her look good enough that she doesn't think Tyler will care if that's not the kind of dressing up he was hoping she'd pull.

This one's not a date, exactly; it's more like a group dinner, but it's mostly grad students hailing from Harvard and focusing on different areas of work, so Erica doesn't find it as awkward to talk to them as it could have been. She doesn't bother offering to pay because it's ridiculous; she can't afford it, Tyler knows she can't afford it, and she told him so already in the cab.

"I'm glad we had this conversation," Tyler said, clearly trying not to laugh at her.

"I didn't want you to think I was rude," Erica said.

Tyler gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and whispered, "I'm glad you care about what I think."

"I will hurt you," she said, but her heart wasn't in it.

She has such a nice time she agrees to go clubbing afterwards, which is a stupid idea on so many levels, the main one being she doesn't like clubbing. There's a headache brewing in her temples after ten minutes in that atmosphere, and when she slips out to get some air and decide whether she wants to stay a while longer or grab a cab, her phone rings in her hand.

Except it's not her phone, because if it were her phone, it would ring in her bag. She's holding onto Tyler's, but she doesn't realize that until she opens the message he just received.

`You took Erica Albright _clubbing_?` it says, and she catches a glimpse of the sender as she rolls her eyes.

She doesn't _mean_ to reply. But it's there already, and the last thing she wants to do is feel like she did something wrong by opening a message by accident, so she picks up her own phone, copies in Cameron's number, and sends,

` You do realize you don't know me, right?`

properly signed with her name.

His reply comes faster than she anticipates. `It just doesn't seem like you, that's all.` Then, `You should give Tyler his phone back.`

`So you can lecture him on where it's okay to take someone you don't know?` Erica replies.

`Point`, he sends back, and, `If you want to get out of there, you should tell him. He won't mind. And before you say anything, you should realize I do know him`.

She goes back inside and stays for another half hour; she has a drink and dances for a while with a Civil Engineering student she met earlier whose name Erica vaguely remembers as some variation of Anne or Anna. She's so good at leading and so comfortable Erica stops feeling like she's embarrassing herself about thirty seconds after Anna grasps her hips. It's actually fun, even if it isn't Erica's preferred activity for the or any evening.

Tyler cuts in after a while and Anna smirks at her before finding someone else to dance with. "You're kind of stiff," he says in her ear. The music is loud and his voice needs to carry over, and it loses all semblance of a tone in the volume. She has no idea if she should be offended by that remark or what.

"Well, it's not really my scene," she says, a little sarcastic, cocking her head, and he breaks away to look at her for a second. Then, he cradles her face in his hands and kisses her, kind of rough and kind of affectionate all at once, and she kisses back because she wants to, because she feels like it. It's not dirty and he doesn't try to deepen it; it's just lips on lips and her trying to say between kisses, "I'm not really a big fan of making out in public, either."

Her words are drowned by the music and by Tyler saying immediately after pulling back, "Let's go home," like the only possible way to handle the fact that she's "stiff" is kissing her and getting out of the club.

Maybe she should start giving him some credit. Cameron, too.

She forgoes her rules on the drive back to the hotel and hauls herself up into Tyler's lap, drawing a knee into her chest and letting him run his hand up her bare shin. For some reason she's landed in the exact headspace where she has no qualms about kissing him without prompting, in the back of a cab, sitting on his lap.

"I thought you didn't do this," he says while she suckles soft, fading marks into his neck. She feels the vibration of the words on her lips.

They stumble into his suite when they get to the hotel, dropping bags and shoes and jackets along the living room. They collapse on a pile in his bed and she laughs, long and satisfying, before crawling up his body and pressing her mouth to his a little less frantically.

As soon as she's horizontal, she feels her breathing steady, a sweet calmness spread over her stomach. Both their bodies slow down and down until they're kissing lazily and she's having trouble keeping her eyes open. "I'm falling asleep," she points out, murmured into his mouth, and he laughs in the back of his throat and says, "Yeah, we should probably do that," and pulls her in until her head's buried between his neck and shoulder, the fabric of his shirt cooler than his skin, and she's breathing him in and drifting off.

//

When she wakes up, she's alone in the room, but she can hear a rumbling of life and activity behind the door. For a moment, she clutches the comforter and closes her eyes and hopes against hope she didn't sleep in a cocktail dress; as her skin loses its sleepy numbness, she feels cool instead of uncomfortable, and doesn't need to look to know she at least made it out of the dress. This is confirmed by actually opening her eyes and seeing that particular item of clothing folded over the arm of a chair by the closet.

She rubs her face and considers for a second if Tyler will mind if she takes a shower in his bathroom, and then she decides she doesn't care and heads in anyway. Her dress stares at her; there's something really unappealing about wearing that kind of fabric this early in the morning, so she gives herself permission to grab something from Tyler's closet anyway. She'll hand it back when she gets to her room.

She ends up wearing the smallest white t-shirt she can find, folded at the sides to fit her dress over it, because her underwear covers a lot but it doesn't entirely cover the potential of running into Cameron in it, and a t-shirt of Tyler's might hold on her body, but pants will definitely not.

"What are you wearing?" Tyler says, the corners of his mouth crooking up, when she finds him in the kitchenette. He's leaning against the countertop, one of his hands curled around the edge by the toaster. His hair is wet from the shower, falling obliquely over his forehead.

"Walk of shame clothes?" she offers. "I briefly entertained the thought of going back to my room in my underwear, but I'm not sure the other guests in the hotel would appreciate that."

He laughs. "I'm sure they would."

He's still eying her oddly, though, so she adds, eyes wide with indifference, "I don't feel comfortable wearing black or... dresses or anything nighty in the morning."

"But you do if you put a shirt on under it?" She shrugs, and he laughs again. "I'm just saying if you were wearing heavy shoes or something instead of barefoot, you'd look kind of like a punk."

"I would," she says incredulously. "And now I look like..."

"A punk at a beach bonfire?"

She rolls her eyes, and there's a short stretch of silence. He's still looking at her. "Coffee?" she asks.

"Sure," he says, like he's snapping out of something, and grabs a cup to pour some in for her, leaves it on the countertop.

Stepping closer, she hooks a couple of fingers in a side belt loop on his jeans. She grabs the edge of the counter for leverage and pushes herself up, into him.

"Hi," he says when she's closer, frowning a little, and she bites her lip and tilts her head up to kiss him.

He's still for a second, but Erica doesn't have time to break away before he wraps a hand around her waist and responds, tentative at first and still slow as it goes on, but harder, taking on an almost proprietorial quality that she's never seen from Tyler before, determined in a way that makes her balance precarious, her feet raising so high her toes kind of hurt.

She doesn't get around to fixing that angle; after a few seconds, the heels of his hands press into the dips of her collarbone. She pulls back, and he scrunches his mouth up at her, lets out something that sounds halfway between a hiss and a sigh, and says, "Wrong twin."

She freezes. It's the askew balance between guilt and amusement, the genuine concern and probably contact embarrassment overpowering anything he may find funny about this, that lets her know he's not lying.

"Oh, my god," she blurts out between her teeth, and stumbles back until her heels steady on the floor. She opens her mouth a few times before actually speaking. "You _asshole_ , why did you let me do that?"

"I didn't realize you didn't know who I was," he says. _Cameron_ says. Jesus fucking Christ.

She gapes at him, and then lets her expression shift into something a little less ridiculous. Anger. Contempt. Mostly contempt. "After I kissed you?"

"I've never actually had to push someone off who thought I was my _brother_. It's not like there's a handbook," Cameron points out. She presses her lips together, her tongue shyly licking between them. Her face feels tense. She closes her eyes, breathing, trying to, and realizes with a start that his hand's still on her waist.

Looking up at him, she tries to tell herself why she should step away, why this is not okay to do, because her stream of thoughts is going for the other approach, the _wrong_ approach, the one that says, _I'm not dating Tyler_ and _I'm leaving in a couple of days anyway_ and, when she hears steps, an even wronger approach, the one that wonders just how much Cameron and Tyler are willing to share.

She chalks it up to sleep deprivation and turns around to smile at Tyler. "Hi," she says.

Tyler raises an eyebrow at her, then eyes Cameron incredulously. Then, he rolls his eyes and says, "Are you staying for breakfast?"

Erica grits her teeth for a moment. "I probably should go."

"It's fine if you stay," Tyler says.

"How long did you stand there?" she asks.

"Long enough," Tyler says. Cameron snorts a laugh behind her, and she lets out a long-suffering sigh. "I still think you should stay."

She does, because he seems to mean it and it feels weirder not to. Also, they have coffee ready, and like, basic kitchen appliances, which Erica's room does not include, and she's never been the biggest fan of having breakfast alone in public.

They call in some room service, French toast and a few pieces of fruit, and sit around the kitchen table instead of the big one near the balcony. She has about two seconds to feel uncomfortable before Cameron picks up the paper and starts talking about stocks, and after that it's kind of easy; it's actually kind of bizarre how not awkward it is. She doesn't feel completely comfortable, but Cameron and Tyler seem to; the peak of their discomfort is a second where Tyler begins to talk about the lawsuit and Cameron reminds him that Erica's in the room and they probably shouldn't discuss it in front of her.

At one point, Tyler reaches for her, strokes the back of her neck for a while, and she loosens up a little, under his hand and Cameron's amused gaze.

She leaves after that, and decides to take the day to herself—get some work done, maybe do some sight-seeing. Tyler's not exactly a stifling presence, but she feels like she could use the space; she doesn't want to get on a plane feeling bad about a one-week _thing_ , a one-week nothing even, ending badly.

//

Her stay is extended into the following week.

Erica's not even entirely sure why; she has nothing new to say, and didn't the last time they brought her back, but she doesn't have anything important to tend to that she can't from the wireless in her hotel room, and she finds herself kind of wanting to stay, wanting to see where this thing with Tyler could go so she can write off the option of trying long distance as pointless without any doubts. She doesn't _want_ it to be pointless, she just—she's realistic. She's not falling in love with him or anything, but she would like to get a little more out of this, whatever it is, before giving up on it.

It's Marylin Delpy who informs her of this development, and warns her before switching around her flight details. She does this over coffee, and all Erica can say once Marylin's done talking is, "I thought you said you didn't work during your breaks."

Marylin presses her lips together and glances at her watch. "This one doesn't start for another twenty seconds."

"Don't you ever get tired of being nice?" Erica asks her.

Marylin shrugs one-shouldered, making a noncommittal sound. "It can be fun to fake," she says. "But I'm not always nice."

"I think you are," Erica says, carefully stirring her cappuccino. She looks Marylin in the eye and feels a corner of her lips curl up. "I think you are, or you would tell me how you're not."

"Is that a challenge?" Marylin says, and Erica shrugs nonchalantly. Marylin leans over the table and gives Erica a sharp look. "I'm not that easy," she deadpans, and straightens up.

Erica leans back, sliding off her seat just enough for it to feel like crouching. "Do your people realize I have shit to do? Like, a life to get back to?"

"Oh, trust me, this is not my people," Marylin says. "But it's just a couple of days. You'll be on a plane Tuesday."

"Can't milk me any further, huh?" Erica huffs a laugh and sits up.

Marylin raises her eyebrows almost imperceptibly. After a long sigh, she takes a short sip from her steaming cup and says, "Let's hope for both our sakes they don't."

//

Tyler doesn't call the rest of the day, which Erica figures is for the best. She's not really in the mood for a fight, and she knows things will blow up if they're alone. She doesn't know if Cameron and Tyler are just both really good at faking being at ease, or if they have some sort of competitive thing going on about, like, composure or something, but she's fairly certain the only reason yesterday's breakfast wasn't weird is that they were both there, and whatever happened she would witness. There's no way it just didn't matter. She has no idea what it's like to have a twin, but she knows she wouldn't be happy if someone she was dating, however briefly, randomly kissed her sister and didn't even apologize. Of course no one she'd date could really get them mixed up, but—she almost kissed Cameron again after she knew, which amounts to almost the same thing.

She should at least apologize. That was not a good thing to do. She runs to the door and grabs her key card and her hand's on the handle when she realizes that no, she's not going upstairs to apologize. Cameron could be there. She likes to face things head on, but Cameron is not one of the things she should be facing. She leaves her keycard back on the table by the door and runs a hand through her hair, using the elastic stretched around her wrist to pull it all back into a low ponytail. She's walking back towards her desk when there's a knock on the door.

And another.

She bites her lip and throws a wary look back over her shoulder before turning around and going to open the door.

She stares instead of saying hi. She should say hi. Hey. Something, some kind of acknowledgment. She turns her staring into observing instead, and deduces it's Tyler partly by how he wears his hair, but honestly mostly by the strained expression on his face, more than a little frustration fighting to come out as anger. She breathes in. He's looking back at her, not saying anything. Neither one of them is saying anything.

She opens her mouth to rectify that, but before any words are out, he steps in, reaching for the door and pushing it shut so abruptly she doesn't have time to realize she's not touching the edge of it anymore until it slams against the frame. She looks higher up—he's closer, she has to if she wants to look him in the eye—and is about to ask what the hell he's doing when his hands come down on her body, one stroking her side for about a millisecond before sliding up and cupping her breast through her shirt, and the other one tilting her face up into a rough kiss.

A solid surface hits her shoulders before she realizes he's been backing her into the wall. It's not smooth or painless; the smash vibrates down her back, and the wall is rough as he lifts her legs around his hips and drags her sideways until she hits the side of her shin against a low dresser. He swallows her complaint before it makes a sound and she holds onto his arms, letting him hold her up for a while.

When she tries to shift some of her weight onto the dresser, something falls down with a dry thump, but it doesn't sound broken, or like it's something of hers. She can't see past his body, but she knows there's—she can look beside herself and she doesn't want to have to pay damages or something so she says, steady as she can, "The lamp."

"What?" Tyler breathes against her chest, his fingers making stead work of her shirt buttons until he can bite at the swell of her breasts.

"The lamp, get the lamp down, I don't want it to fall."

He laughs, sudden and vibrating down her neck, and mutters, incredulous, "The lamp. You're thinking about the lamp," but he sets her down on the surface and moves the lamp to the floor. He stands again, and curls his fingers over her knees. "All good?" he asks, almost tonelessly, and drags his hands under her skirt, going straight for her panties.

She doesn't say, "Yeah, all good," until her skirt's bunched around her waist and her underwear's on the floor. He laughs again, softer this time, rumbly against her lips, and she reaches behind herself to take off her bra. She feels like she should do something, but she doesn't have room for it; Tyler moves fast and almost randomly, his hands roaming her body, kneading at her lower belly, fingertips tracing the contour of her breasts, her ribs. He crouches a little to catch one of her nipples in his mouth, teeth grazing roughly, almost biting, and his hand moves to her calf, thumb and forefinger sketching out the tendons soft enough to send shivers up her leg.

He's _playing_ her. He's playing her like it's supposed to tell her something and all she can think about is that if this is Tyler's possessive streak and all it needed to come out was for Erica to kiss his brother, she's glad she did it with enough time to spare and reap the benefits.

His mouth keeps running, lower, lower, and his knees hit the floor momentarily as he bites at the inside of her knee, her thigh. It's a really bad angle to go down on her, but somehow it still comes as a surprise when he straightens out, wraps one of her legs around him and cups a palm over her, her legs falling even wider open.

He doesn't take advantage of it right away. He slows down, his hand still there, touching but not really touching her, breathing even louder than she is.

"Before we do anything," he begins.

She laughs, a strangled sound in her throat. "Before _we_ do—"

He cuts her off. "Before I do anything to you, I just want you to know—"

"What?" she whines, impatient. She reaches an arm to hold onto one of his sleeves and cups her breast with her other hand, squeezing, catching her nipple between two fingers and closing them as hard as she can. He observes her, tongue peeking over his lips, lids heavy. It's a distraction, and normally that'd be good but she wants to know what he was going to say, so she repeats, "What?" and watches him snap back into his idea of how this was going to go. His eyes open further and go slightly dark, sharp.

"I just want to be sure you know this is Tyler," he finally says, his voice rough and lower than she's ever heard it, and she rolls her hips into his hand, head tipping back as a couple of fingers stretch her out.

"I know," she gasps, rocking her hips faster, trying to screw herself on them and being thrown off by his deliberate lack of a rhythm. "Fuck, I know," she says again, the closest to a plea she'll get.

"Are you sure?" he says, and now he's just mocking her. She squeezes her eyes shut and lets her hands fall to her sides, on the slippery surface of the dresser. She hears something metal clink and _hopes_ it's his belt. This is really low. She hates being this desperate. She enjoys it, the anticipation, the way that need weaves itself into her body as intensity, but that doesn't mean she _likes_ it.

"Are you going to get rid of my skirt?" she mentions, because it's better than _Yes, I'm sure, I get it, you and your brother are not interchangeable, please just fuck me_. She doubts she even has the presence of mind to get that many words out at once.

He hums under his breath, the general feeling of movement around her stopping again. "No, I don't think so," he says, and she feels her eyebrows raise, her lids stretch over her eyes.

Her tone is even more unaffected when she asks, "Are you going to fuck me?"

She hears him breathe then, a sharp intake of air, and then he says, "Alright," and she's off the dresser and up against the wall again before she has time to brace herself for a second slam.

//

She hops in the shower after, while he gets dressed. He has to be somewhere in like an hour, so she knows he's leaving, but it's still kind of surprising and off-putting to come out of the bathroom to an empty room. Her window's open, has been all day, and now it's gotten darker outside, natural brightness replaced by city lights, the soft breeze that came in before has turned chilly and quiet. She thinks about closing the window, but she likes the sound of the traffic floors below, the sound of life going outside better than silence. Besides, she should get something to eat anyway before the hotel restaurant closes.

When taking the elevator back to her room, she runs into Cameron. It's weird, feeling like she should learn to tell them apart, noticing the differences, remembering things like how Tyler can't be back yet and the way they style their hair and how Cameron holds himself a little straighter. She shouldn't. There really isn't a point to it—she's leaving in a couple of days and they spend their life in different places and she already tried and failed to keep a long-distance relationship once, which she still thinks had something to do with how ready she was to ask Mark Zuckerberg out when she met him. The thing is, she's not deliberately pretending either one of them isn't who he is. If she gets them mixed up, it's an honest mistake, and once she's corrected, she doesn't, like, forget who she's talking to.

That should be enough to stop her feeling awkward about this, but apparently it isn't.

"Hey," she says as she walks in, and is about to venture a guess and call him Cameron when he does so himself. "Thanks."

The corners of his mouth curl up fractionally, like he's trying not to let show how amusing this all is to him, and says, "No problem."

She takes a deep breath. "Look, I've known you guys for a week. And half the time you were wearing suits."

"Okay," he says, frowning.

"I'm just saying, if you lie to me, I'm really not at fault for believing you," she says.

He lifts his hands to stop her, as though surrendering. It's kind of condescending. "I get it."

"Good," she says, and leans back against the elevator wall, drawing into herself.

"There's humor to be found in this situation," Cameron says after a while, and Erica's head snaps up to glare at him. "Not like that. We're not blaming you. You're right, you don't know us very well. But if we drew frustration out of this kind of mix-up, we'd burst into flames."

Erica cracks a small smile and breathes out. "That makes sense," she says, her voice small. "But I'm not sure Tyler's on that wavelength."

"He's fine," Cameron says with a shrug. "To be fair, you didn't just call me by his name, you kissed me thinking I was him. So he may take a while to come around."

"I'm leaving in two days," Erica points out, cocking her head.

"A short while." There's that amused expression again.

Erica feels a light flush run up her neck, hopefully not visibly, and then she returns the smile.

//

Tyler texts her later that night, telling her he'll pick her up for breakfast tomorrow if she wants, and she only hesitates for a second before accepting. He knocks on her door about ten minutes after he said he would, which Erica chooses to appreciate because ten minutes ago her hair was still damp from the shower. They walk for a few minutes, turn a few corners, and then Erica finds herself sitting by a picture window in a small bakery, sipping the best Viennese coffee she's tried in her life and dodging Tyler's eyes. He's staring. It should be fine, but she feels a little like she's under scrutiny, and the longer he looks at her, the more lingering stares she finds herself under, the more uncomfortable she is.

"Did you want something?" Erica says after forcibly swallowing a bite of vanilla cupcake.

Tyler leans back, only reaching for his coffee once his back practically shapes up a triangle with the back of his chair. She doesn't doubt it's a casual move, but she also doesn't doubt he's trying to work something out about her.

For a couple of seconds, she fidgets with the blue cupcake cup, and then she catches herself and picks off a piece. "What's going on?"

"I have no idea," he says, hands rising a fraction, like a shrug. His mouth is scrunched into a half smile, like he's humoring her, but behind all that, she can hear something accusatory in his tone.

She feels her body try to mirror his passive-aggressive demeanor and stops just in time. That would send the kind of confrontational message she doesn't want to send. She has absolutely no reason to engage.

"I mean, I really have no idea," Tyler says, straightening up with his hands holding onto the edges of his seat at first, and then coming down on the table. His voice is softer this time.

When she says, "Okay," it's not so much an _okay, I understand_ as it is an _I hear you_ and a cue for him to go on.

He stretches his fingers and echoes, "Okay." He picks up a packet of sugar and pours a pinch of it into his coffee, trying it and humming approvingly. "Okay," he says again, "do you want to get some pie to go? This place makes a mean chocolate cheesecake."

The rest of breakfast goes about as well as can be expected with a metaphorical elephant stomping on their table. It's fucking weird that Erica can't figure out exactly how to send it away; there's very clearly something they should talk about, but she can't figure out if it's about Cameron or about _them_ or about, like, whether they're going to lose touch for good after this. As elephants in the room go, it's one coy motherfucker. It's like it has its message plastered on its ass instead of its forehead, and Erica's not about to walk around to see it.

He walks her back to the hotel, and she gives him an awkward kiss on the cheek in the lobby before taking the stairs to her floor. She needs to get some stuff, and change into an outfit that won't look overly out of place in a place full of businesspeople in suits. It's the last appointment she has to honor at the law firm, and she somehow manages to get through it unscathed, and in a shorter time than she expects. They ask her to wait outside the room for a few minutes while they—Erica doesn't even know what they do, figure out if there's anything else they can squeeze out of her, probably.

In the elevator, she checks her phone and sees an e-mail from the company she applied for an internship with last month. An acceptance e-mail. She bites her lip to hide a huge grin lest it scare the other people in the elevator. Keeping from jumping up and down is a little easier; Erica's always been respectful of enclosed spaces in motion.

She goes down to the lobby and sits in one of the couches with a book, managing to read about two pages and text about five people, until Marylin comes down to tell her she's free to go and they hopefully will never extricate her from her life again.

"I appreciate that," Erica says, closing the book and sliding into the outside pocket of her purse.

Marylin looks at her for a moment, head tilted, bottom lip drawn in wrong, like she's biting the inside of it. Then, she says, "Do you want to have lunch? I could use the company."

The first answer that crosses Erica's mind is a question—don't you have work to do with my testimony?—but then she glances at the clock over reception and realizes it's been an hour and a half since she came down here. And she's pretty hungry.

Marylin takes her to a different place this time; it's a little farther away, and nicer-looking, and the menus have more zeroes after the prices, and they actually are offered menus. Marylin says it's her favorite place to eat in the area.

"So why didn't you take me here before? Did you fear I'd sully your secret hideaway?" She's only half-joking. She's not offended at all, but she can see how taking work to a place you love—and Erica can see why Marylin loves it; there's something really charming about the chair design, the way the sunlight filters in between curtains, even the smell—would ruin it.

Marylin cocks her head, presses her lips together for a long moment, and then says, "Yes." A huffy snort betrays her serious façade.

This doesn't make them friends—more like people who happen to be in the same general area at a given time and happen to appreciate each other's company, Erica thinks, and winces at how much that sounds like a clarification Mark would make—so Erica's not sure what compels her to tell Marylin about the Winklevoss twins. All she knows is she's had a glass of wine and she mentions off-handedly that this week she has drunk more decent wine than in the rest of her life combined, and Marylin asks _where_ she's had all that wine, and suddenly Erica's blurting out that she's kind of been dating one of the Winklevoss twins.

"For a has-the-days-counted meaning of dating, anyway."

"You've been seeing—okay." Marylin seems a little taken aback; it takes that much for Erica to realize she maybe shouldn't be telling this to one of Mark's lawyers. Even if Marylin's just second chair or whatever.

Erica doesn't really want to lie or respectfully bow out of the conversation, though, so before she adds anything else, she makes sure to say explicitly that it's all off the record, and points out that it's completely irrelevant to the lawsuits anyway. Twice. For good measure.

"Noted," Marylin says. She smiles like Erica's overreacting, which is not out of the realm of possibility. "So why is this something that makes you fidget?"

"I'm not—" Erica looks down at her hands and lets go of the tablecloth. "I'm not," she repeats, this time with feeling. "It's just this weird—"

Marylin cuts her off before she can say thing. "Wait, which one are you dating?"

The pause before Erica's answer is a lot more awkward and telling than her actual answer. Her actual answer is straightforward; she's been dating Tyler. Sort of. Maybe.

"The certainty pouring out of your mouth is overwhelming," Marylin says flatly, and a waiter comes by to take their order. Once he's gone, she adds thoughtfully, "So where does the doom come from?"

"Geography."

"I meant in the short term," Marylin clarifies.

"I would definitely call tomorrow's doom short-term."

Marylin leans over the table and says, "How about today's?" Her tone is sharp enough to talk Erica out of walking around the point again.

"I don't think I'm comfortable talking about this."

Marylin blinks at her. "You brought it up."

"I kissed Cameron the other day," Erica says. "It was an accident. I thought it was Tyler. Anyone could have made that mistake." Marylin nods along, and Erica's grateful to her for keeping any urge to joke about this she may have out of her face.

"And now you want him too."

Before Marylin's done talking, when Erica still somehow thinks Marylin's going to ask if Erica's still having trouble telling them apart, she denies it. Once the words register, she blurts out, "What?"

"Now you want Cameron," Marylin says. "You want both of them. Otherwise you wouldn't have told me you were dating one of the twins. You would just have said Tyler."

"That's ridiculous," Erica says immediately, and Marylin raises her eyebrows. "Your reasoning is ridiculous. The rest of it is—" She tilts her head and figures it's all or nothing. "—not untrue. But the reasoning is ridiculous."

"I was just venturing a guess," Marylin says. "So what are you going to do?"

Erica snorts. "Nothing," she says. Marylin gives her a sharp look. "I'm going to do nothing," Erica repeats. "After this, I'm going to go back to my hotel, I'm going to pack, and I'm going to give my mom a call because she won't forgive me if I wait to get home to call her. And tomorrow I'm gonna get on a plane and forget all about the last week."

"Sounds like a plan," Marylin says perfunctorily.

Shrugging, Erica says, "Well, what should I do? I can't even tell if Tyler's pissed at me. He acts like he isn't—"

"So it would be safe to assume he's not?"

"—and then he acts like he's completely weirded out by everything."

"I think I'd be weirded out too, in his position."

"So he could just say, hey, Erica, I can't get over the fact that you kissed my brother, and you're leaving tomorrow anyway, so why don't we declare our relationship over? It's not like we ever even had one in the first place."

Marylin taps her thumb on the table and says, barely suppressing a smirk, "Can something that doesn't exist not exist any _more_?"

"Laugh all you want," Erica says, but she's smiling too, and when the waiter approaches them with their food, her stomach rumbles a little, just loud enough for her to notice and not think it's carried over to anyone else's ears. "It's just a bizarre situation."

"No, I can see that," Marylin agrees.

Talking is a little easier after that, and Erica actually enjoys herself, and the food, and Marylin's company. She's still thinking about the internship, so she tells Marylin about it, about how it's actually remunerated and in the right field and she gets to live in her catch of a Boston apartment for a couple more months, which she's convinced she's going to miss when she moves to New York to start grad school.

Marylin stares at her a little weirdly then, her eyebrows furrowing.

"What?"

"I thought they had a place in New York," Marylin says.

"Who?"

"The—Winklevosses. I mean, not just a place, but—"

Erica huffs out a snort. "I'm not going to make plans based on a few dates and the possibility that in a lot of months I'll maybe be just a subway ride away from them."

"That sounds responsible," says Marylin, looking like she means it, and that's the end of that tangent.

She gets back to the hotel around three, makes good on her promise to call her mom and puts the finishing touches on a few pages she wanted to send to her thesis advisor before going back to Boston. She takes out her suitcase—she doesn't trust herself to squeeze packing into the space between waking up and panicking about missing her flight, which leaves at noon—and stares at it for a while, reaching for the remote instead, and watches TV for a while before she realizes her stuff is not going to pack itself. It's not a very difficult job—Erica's an efficient packer, and she brought a medium-sized suitcase for only a few days, which means it all fits in without too much trouble, and there's extra space that she barely even needs because she hasn't acquired much of anything since she got here; the heaviest extras are a couple of DVDs, a textbook she had to get anyway and a pair of black court shoes.

Her suitcase closes down easy; once that's done, Erica puts away her clothes for tomorrow and looks around the room, trying to make sure she didn't throw anything into some corner. It wouldn't be the first time she's left a shirt or a watch or an umbrella behind. The dresser by the window stares at her as if daring her to look in its drawers for the fourth time today, and as she glares at it back, she stops thinking about its drawers and starts thinking about Tyler setting her down on the surface.

She shouldn't leave like this.

She shouldn't leave like this, so she grabs her key card, slips on the pair of flats she left out for flying day comfort and heads up to the Winklevosses' room.

//

The door's cracked open. She knocks, soft at first, then a little harder. "Hello?"

"Come in," a deep, familiar voice says quickly from the living room. She wonders whether the Winklevosses make a habit of telling people to come in at random or he actually recognized her voice.

She walks in either way. "Should I close the door?" she yells out, and does so when she gets a _Sure_ as a reply.

The living room is connected to the foyer, no doors in between, just a corner to turn, so it's only a few more steps before she sees one of the twins sitting on the couch, pouring over a stack of papers and folders.

He looks up at her, says, "Hi," and writes something down. She walks in closer, stopping when she reaches the back of the couch. She leans forward over it, forearms resting near his head.

She's wondering what she's supposed to say here—if she should wait before she says anything, even—when he turns to face her and says, "Hey," again.

"Kind of got that the first time," Erica points out.

"But you didn't say it back," he says, tilting his head.

Erica snorts a laugh. "Hello," she sing-songs, and then she falls silent. He's just—there's something about the way he's looking at her that makes her breath catch in her throat. It's intense and it's guarded at the same time and it's definitely enough to know this is not Tyler. This doesn't feel like Tyler, and she was supposed to _talk_ to Tyler.

She can't tear her eyes away.

"So," says Cameron, licking his lips, his eyes still trained on hers, "you're leaving tomorrow, right?"

Nodding is really all she can do, and it's a dazed nod. She blinks at him; they're eye level, with him sitting and her crouching over the back of the couch. She leans forward, just a little, and Cameron's eyes flicker to her mouth.

He shifts in his seat; she feels the couch move under his weight. She feels herself move under the metaphorical weight of this, too, her head tipping forward a little, like maybe her neck will hold everything up better if the angle of it changes. It feels better this way, closer to something—closer to him, so close she can smell his aftershave, and yes, this is definitely Cameron, she can't believe they use different—

He kisses her.

He kisses her, and she responds because she wants so badly to respond, and because she doesn't know where Tyler is and if he's not willing to talk about whatever he's feeling weird about, she can't fix it, she can only break it _more_ , and hell, she wants to do that. Not for the sake of wrecking anything, but just—this is something she wants.

She's the one to break away first, and Cameron stares at her as she walks around the couch, rising to his feet when she's standing by the arm of the couch. He takes a very dangerous-looking step towards her.

She stays where she is, and breathes in deep as he leans down to kiss her again, his hands holding onto her hips as he walks her backwards towards—a bedroom. That way is Tyler's bedroom, and that's where he's walking her. Backwards. It's a little weird; he has to crouch down so much, and she almost feels like she's dancing ballet, standing on her tiptoes and trying to stretch her body as far up as it'll go.

The fact that Cameron's pushing her back into Tyler's bedroom doesn't register as bizarre at all. It's closer, for starters, and it's a hotel suite anyway, and maybe it isn't even Tyler's in the first place—maybe they're not attached to either room either way. She would, but maybe they're not. Or maybe Tyler's been fucking her in Cameron's room all along. Fuck.

She's actually used to being walked backwards towards a bed or a couch or a wall, but she's not used to being walked backwards by someone this tall. She's moved with Tyler, from a door to a couch or a bed, but Tyler always lasted about two steps before he grew impatient and grabbed the backs of her thighs to pull her up, urging her to wrap her legs around him so he could rush towards wherever they were going. And she gets it now, gets why Tyler did that, because walking like this is slow, and Cameron's careful, like he doesn't trust himself not to stomp down on her feet if he goes any faster, and she just wants to run back but that would mean letting go, and all she can do is hold onto his shirt and sigh into his mouth and he opens hers up with his tongue.

It's not a big room, at least, and she feels the edge of Tyler's bed against her knees after a few steps. He bites at her bottom lip before pulling back, and she looks at him, heavy-lidded, and swallows, and waits for something to happen.

He picks her up. He just picks her up in this controlled, measured way, like he's doing it just because he can. One second her feet are firm on the floor and the next she's lying on her back on a familiar mattress; she doesn't have time to be scared he's going to drop her or she's going to go flying backwards and hit her head against something.

She laughs when he squeezes her thighs, because that's familiar, and gasps when his hands slip under her shirt, skin to skin on her waist, because that's not. He gets started on the buttons of her shirt from the bottom up, his knuckles brushing her stomach as he goes, and then the underside of her breasts; her head tips back, and her lids threaten to fall over her eyes. She makes a concerted effort to look at him; it's hard enough to focus on his hands, and harder to draw her eyes up to his face and wait for him to meet her gaze.

"You're not Tyler," she points out, because she thinks it's fair that they both go into this knowing they're both aware of it, even though it would have been fairer if he'd been the first to say so.

"Do you _want_ me to be Tyler?" Cameron says, amusement playing wide in his eyes. Erica finds she doesn't mind that as much as she minds the undercurrent of seriousness, of Cameron offering to—to _pretend_ he is his brother while he has sex with her, like that's not beyond messed up.

Erica would get nothing out of that fight, anyway, so she picks her battles. "Why do you guys keep saying that?"

"'You guys'?" Cameron echoes.

"Like, things are," she begins, trailing off for a moment when Cameron cups her breasts over her bra. She lets her head fall back and grasps at his arms. "Things are or they're not, you can't just change them at your convenience."

Cameron huffs out a laugh at the same time he undoes the buttons of her pants. "Technically they'd be changing at _your_ convenience," he says, and moves his hands up again, around her, to unclasp her bra. It's almost incongruous, his tone and the things he's doing; it's hard to piece them all together.

"That is miles away from the point," Erica says dryly. She props herself up on her elbows and rolls her shoulders until her bra straps slip over them, still under her sleeves, and lets her bra fall to her stomach.

"Why are we discussing this?" says Cameron, tracing her collarbone with his thumb before moving his hand downwards.

She shrugs, saying, "I don't know," just as he rolls her nipple between two fingers, and she's so startled she moans and her hips jerk up, knees bending, weight falling on her feet. He takes the chance to hook his thumbs into the sides of her waistband and pull down her pants.

She feels his nails on her hips again before he says, "May I?"

She rolls her eyes, but tilts her hips up so he can slide her underwear down. He leaves her clothes bundled around her knees; she's smiling when his mouth comes down on hers, licking shallow between her lips in this weird playful way that's not at all what Erica was expecting, but she's willing to get used to.

He doesn't give her a lot of time to enjoy it before moving down to her chin, trailing kisses over her jaw and neck and. He sneaks a hand between her legs, grazing her inner thighs with his fingers as he kisses at the swell of her breast, mouth moving down until it closes around her nipple, sucking lightly.

"Want me to bite?" he says against her skin, and swipes the flat of his tongue over her nipple.

She frowns even though for once he's not looking at her, and his teeth graze her as though hoping for a response, and she says yes because at this point she wants to say yes to everything. She wants to push her hips closer to his hand, but she doesn't; instead, she tries to slow down her thoughts and her body to this conversational rhythm Cameron's keeping up.

She doesn't have time to adapt to that either; as soon as she makes an effort to relax her stomach, he touches her right where she needs, spreading her out with two fingers and then pushing them in. It's sudden and something of a stretch—he has big hands—but it's a good one, and a good kind of sudden. She makes a pleased noise and he draws back again, his fingers damp when they touch her shin as he falls to his knees at the foot of the bed.

Cameron looks up at her as he gets rid of her shoes and her clothes. It's almost like they're having a staring competition, only Erica feels fine blinking, but she wants to grin, and she kind of wants to chuckle, and that's what she tries to suppress, that urge to burst into laughter.

It works. It works and that amusement, that need to laugh at herself and everything that's going on, fades away as he holds her knees apart and and slips his fingers back in, dragging them in and out slowly, his eyes flickering up and down as he does. She holds his gaze until he thumbs at her clit and she decides it's not worth the effort, it's not worth keeping her head up, it's not worth the reluctance to roll her hips she feels when he's looking at her, like she should let him work her out.

As it turns out, his idea of working her out doesn't involve as much guesswork as it involves direct questions that would make her flush with heat if her face wasn't already hot for a different reason. While Tyler seemed to go for the trial-and-error approach, Cameron just asks things. It's probably the most self-aware sex Erica's ever had, or at least it tries to be; it works up to a point, and that point is the moment Erica starts registering his voice instead of processing the message, and he has to ask everything twice.

She finds she doesn't mind hearing it.

"Tyler never talks this much," she blurts out, because he doesn't, and it's really hard not to compare them when they look exactly the same.

Cameron pulls back a fraction, licking his lips high against her inner thigh, and then he looks up and says, "I would really like to come at some point."

"I'm sorry," she says, smirking, "does that destroy the mood for you?"

He rolls his eyes. "Don't use it against me." The mattress dips as he speaks, holding his weight as he half stands and climbs on top of her. His fingers are still inside her, slower but still steady, still moving. She holds back a moan when he looks at her, inhaling deep and sighing instead, and considers pursuing the topic, really considers it, but it _is_ pretty weird, no matter how much this feels like they're sharing her, so she refrains.

She's kind of confused when he brings it up again, when he asks, "Does it turn you on to think about it?" His tone is contemplative and _allowing_ and she doesn't deny it right away because—because it doesn't feel like he wants her to, and because she doesn't even register the question at first.

"About..." is what she actually says, baffled and wondering, and then she actually _thinks_ about it, about—about having both of them, about Tyler finding them like this and not leaving, not acting weird, just walking in, and Cameron is trailing his free hand up her arm, his thumb tracing the shape of her chin before pulling at her bottom lip, and she's closing her eyes and drawing his thumb into her mouth, _thinking_ about Tyler while Cameron basically fucks her with both hands, and yes, yes, it does fucking turn her on to think about it, of course it goddamn does.

//

She's pulling her jeans back on when she starts thinking about Tyler in an entirely different way. In a way she should have been thinking about him from the start, before she slept with Cameron, because sure, she's known Tyler for little longer than a week, and they weren't exactly committed, and Tyler was acting ridiculously fucking weird for the last couple of days, but this is—Erica has found college to be an increasingly bizarre learning experience about other people's relationships, but this is still not an ideal situation. In fact it kind of feels like a dick move.

"How does—" she begins, blinking, and Cameron turns back to look at her, one hand still on his hair and one eye still on the mirror for a second before she says, "Tyler," and he focuses on her. She doesn't know how to phrase the question, so she ends up asking, vaguely, "Have you guys ever..."

Cameron seems to get it, at least. He laughs, a dry, soft snort, and says, "Shared a girl before? No. No, we haven't."

"Okay," Erica says, not sure if she's crossed a line.

"But you're not really— _dating_ my brother. You've gone on two dates with him."

Erica gapes at him. "We've had sex more times than that."

"I like to think it's dates that define the seriousness of your relationship," he says, and she cringes at the word relationship, which usually means she's—well, which she doesn't need to know she's not really in one. Because she already knew that. She's probably never going to see them again, in person at least; she's made her peace with it. Fretting about it is pointless.

When she looks up, he's scanning her face, his eyes a little narrowed. She feels an apology coming on, so—because she hasn't done enough inappropriate things lately—she laughs, a loud, sudden burst. "Wow, you guys have really stuck it to Mark, haven't you." Cameron's still looking confused, and she giggles a little, totally undignified, but it's kind of funny. It's really funny to her, suddenly.

Eventually, she sobers up, and he smiles at her like she finds all of this endlessly amusing, and Erica guesses she can live with that.

Tyler comes in when she's just leaving for her room, to have a good night's sleep and squeeze in a good, long morning shower to get her ready for airport-hopping. She's standing in the hall with her fingers on a button of her shirt, because apparently she didn't straighten it out all the way right when she got dressed. The look he gives her isn't welcoming, but it's not angry either; it's just neutral, baffled, _weird_.

It can't get any weirder, so she walks up to him and stands on her toes to kiss him. She's still grinning, and when she pulls back she says, "I like you," and it all feels a little bit like she's drunk on the knowledge that this isn't going to affect her life past maybe five days of cringing every time she remembers what happened.

He just blinks down at her, pressing his lips into a thin line, but she can see a smile starting to crack when she hears Cameron's footsteps.

"Do you have a ride to the airport tomorrow?" Cameron asks, acknowledging his brother with a look. Tyler raises an eyebrow at him.

"I hear there are these things called cabs," she says. "You call them, they come get you. It's a pretty efficient system."

She's not even done talking when Tyler says, "We'll take you."

She frowns. "You as in—" Her finger points vaguely at them, Tyler first, then Cameron, before she can hold back the gesture. "I thought you were busy people," she says. She's not talking about anything specific. As accusations go, it's empty and unnecessary and more of a probably misguided attempt at teasing than anything else.

But Cameron and Tyler are looking at each other, Cameron leaning back against a nearby wall, Tyler shoving his hands down the pockets of his jeans, and Erica feels her eyebrow rise at the realization that they're serious.

"I am capable of grabbing a cab," she points out. "And I honestly have nothing against that possibility."

She's thinking she should leave now instead of letting them think on this, because it makes it look like she's waiting for them to make a decision when she's really just waiting for them to—she doesn't even know. Say goodbye or something. Do the whole here's-my-e-mail-address-keep-in-touch bullshit, maybe.

But that's clearly not happening, so she turns on her heels and is reaching for the door handle when Tyler says at her back, "I'll pick you up at 9."

"You really don't have to do that," Erica says. She's not being polite. He doesn't have to be, and there's a weird struggle in her chest between being offended and flattered. Erica pretty much never feels comfortable accepting favors; something about the practice of it seems to be saying to her _you can't do this on your own_ ; it's why she broke up with Mark in the first place, maybe in some way why she's here, and a few years haven't changed that. She doesn't like to be patronized.

The thing is, drives to the airport aren't covered in her expenses, and the cab she took into the city wasn't exactly cheap. Besides, Tyler and Cameron are not being condescending, and even though what they are doing, the whole chivalry thing, is about as difficult for Erica to handle as normal favors, it also seems genuine. She's almost amused that they mean it; two days ago Tyler was banging her against furniture because he was angry she'd unintentionally kissed his brother, and now she's here and she just deliberately slept with Cameron.

Suddenly she doesn't feel so at ease about the situation. Suddenly, she feels like her presence and Cameron's here are pushing Tyler's real reaction back from showing.

Her discomfort must show on her face or something, because next thing she knows, Tyler's lifting her into a kiss, feet barely touching the ground and strong arms around her. It's like when he practically ambushed her, exactly like that, the practiced roughness and the precarious hold that he's probably keeping exactly right even though to her it seems unbalanced, and it crosses her mind that maybe that night wasn't about jealousy or staking some kind of weird claim on her. Maybe, and that should be weirder to think than it is, it's not sharing he has a problem with. Maybe it's just—this, this kiss that seems to be saying, _when you're kissing me, you're kissing_ me.

She opens her eyes when she realizes she's closed them. Out the corner of her lid she can see Cameron, not only not dodging the visual but looking straight at her, his expression unreadable except for this solid certainty she feels that he's not the slightest bit put off or bothered by this.

Another flash of Cameron's hands grabbing her hips while she's kissing Tyler crosses her mind, this—this imaginary feeling, tactile more than it is a visual. Her knees go weak.

She breaks apart.

"Okay," she says, "you'll pick me up at 9. Got it."

//

She's half-expecting a chauffeur and someone to carry her bags, but it's just Tyler and his flashy sports car. He's in a better mood than he was yesterday, gives her a quick, comfortable peck on the cheek when she opens the door, and the conversation on the way to the airport doesn't lag or take any weird turns. At one point Erica finds herself discussing long-distance relationships, the topic obviously not void of personal implications but kept neutral and theoretical.

Her luggage isn't really unmanageable, but she hates carrying large objects up escalators, so she lets Tyler take care of the bigger one. He insisted on walking her as long as they'd let him, and he makes her suitcase look like it weighs about the same as the shirt he's wearing.

The flight is smooth and calm; she spends it reading a book, and doesn't turn her phone back on until she's in a cab in Boston, heading home. There's a message from Tyler asking her to check in when she got home, which is sweet of him; a couple of missed calls from her mom; a text from her roommate double-checking her flight info that sounds like she's been using their apartment as an illegal den of sin but deep down says _I want to be home to help you unpack and rant about ungrateful corporate law bastards all night long_ ; and just as she's replying to that last one, a voicemail pops up, this one from Cameron.

"Hey, Erica," Cameron says, and uncharacteristically adds, "Um," before getting on with his message. "I hope you're not feeling weird about last night, because we're not. I was actually thinking about what you said and—it doesn't really matter now, but it's really all good. I know you're moving to New York later this summer, so if you need help finding a place or getting around—not that I think you'd need help, but if you want it. You should call us up. Either one of us. Have a safe flight."

At the last part, she frowns, and glancing at the time stamp, realizes Cameron must have left this when she was still in the airport with Tyler. She laughs a surprised laugh, a little baffled as to why that matters, except that he could very well have waited until Tyler wasn't around to call and he didn't, and he could have waited until her flight officially left to leave a message Tyler wouldn't get to hear and he didn't.

She gives herself a moment to realize that, maybe, yeah, if they were around and called her up, she'd have no problem seeing them again—that she'd maybe even try to see them again herself, if she hears they're in New York when she is, maybe, if they keep in touch in some way—and then she takes a deep breath and turns the key to her apartment.


End file.
